Experiential thinking as transition between pre-operational and operational thinking in children

• Main Author: Matija Svetina
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Slovenian Psychologists' Association 2005-04-01
• Series: Psihološka Obzorja
• Subjects: childhood development; cognitive development; conservation; logical thinking; experiential thinking
• Online Access: http://psiholoska-obzorja.si/arhiv_clanki/2005_1/svetina.pdf

Abilities of conservation (of number, length, volume, etc.) tend to appear between 6 and 10 years of age. According to the Piaget's theory, the conservation abilities on different domains are supposed to appear at about the same age because their development is related to the concrete operational thinking. Most of the empirical evidence, however, did not support this assumption, suggesting that conservation on specific domains (e. g. number) tends to appear earlier in regard to other domains (e. g. liquid, volume). In addition, children often showed understanding of conservation when presented with every-day problems, but failed to explain the same problem on its logical level. The problem of the present research was twofold: to determine the developmental priority of either domain of conservation, and to better comprehend the relation between logical, experiential, and perceptual understanding of conservation in children. In the study, 153 children, aged 6 to 8 years, were presented with two Piagetian problems of conservation: number and liquid tasks. The results suggested that understanding of the first task (conservation of number) seems to be necessary for understanding of the other task (conservation of liquid). In addition, experiential thinking seems to play an important role in the development of conservation. The findings can be partly explained in terms of the Vigotsky's zone of proximal development, yet they rise hypotheses that still call for further empirical justification.